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His eyes widen at the distinctive rectangular block, covered beneath a plastic sheet.
"Hey - ii-is this -...?"
The man confirms, but Cooper barely hears him- already on his knees uncovering him. TARS, right here on his reconstructed kitchen floor. He was not prepared for this. He wasn't expecting to ever see him again, at all. His throat tightens as he instinctively runs his hand over his blackened casings.
"Its power source was shot but we can get you a new one if you wan-"
"YEs," he breathes faster than he can think, gaze snapping up. "...Please."
His heart throbs with hope.
That night, in the dead quiet, Cooper was peacefully alone with the offlined robot situated atop his old kitchen table, its terminal cabled up to his laptop sitting right on top of the lifeless machine.
Before even thinking about opening up TARS' panels, he'd taken his time to carefully polish the angular bot up, get the worst of the soot and debris off of his platings. Rather intimately, he'd mindfully wiped down his entire exterior, to prevent dirt getting inside of his components, to the best of his abilities.
It'd felt surreal, next taking his screwdriver directly to TARS' panels followed by his inner components. It wasn't like he hadn't ever seen him open for maintenance before at all. It was really just different with TARS being out cold instead of humming on standby at the very least, and Cooper having to open him up all by himself.
Carefully following the tattered old manual, he'd replaced the blown power cell with the supplied new part. After gently flipping the internal power switch back on, the motherboard LEDs confirmed power was now being fed to the circuits.
Cooper takes a deep breath. "Aight… That should be all…"
With tense anticipation, he enters the boot-up command into the terminal.
And he waits.
"C'mon TARS…"
It's quiet.
"Wake up, bud…"
Cooper slumps back in his chair, his tired back still aching under the strain of gravity.
Then, a low hum sparks to life. Fans begin whirring.
Cooper releases a vocal breath of relief at the series of boot-up beeps that follow. And subsequently, the successful entry to the machine's BIOS menu, flashing onto his laptop's screen.
His eyes sting.
"Thank god… 'least you're turnin' on…"
His hand briefly finds the cool surface of TARS' casings.
The BIOS menu patiently waits on the laptop monitor, keeping the robot dormant until setup is complete.
Cooper straightens up.
"Aight…"
He leans in and enters the menu.
"Settings." A familiar voice synthesizes.
With focus, Cooper navigates.
"General settings."
Next.
"Security settings."
He paused. … Enter.
God, it gave him goosebumps just hearing that stupid wonderful tin can voice again.
He eyed the robot's cue light serve its designed purpose as it turned on, as the terminal's prompt was now awaiting vocal instructions, while displaying an overview of the configurable parameters and their current default values.
He began to meticulously screw everything back in place using the precision screwdriver.
"Honesty; New setting… 95%," he decides.
"-Confirmed! Additional customization?"
Yes. "Humor." A glint of joy came to Cooper's eyes, eager to be reunited with this entity he'd come to call his comrade.
He pauses to consider the right parameter value. "...75%," he decides with a pleased smirk, returning his attention to the micro screws.
"-Confirmed." His smile widens.
Blatant honesty, and a good amount of humor. That'd do for now, Cooper figured, leaving the rest on default settings. He shuts the inner panel with a small click, and hits the keys a few final times to confirm the settings and leave the BIOS menu. He unplugs the cables, and takes the laptop off of his patient, setting it aside. With a gentle press of his fingers, he shuts the interface panel, hiding away the robot's cable ports and restoring his sleek surface.
A short melodic jingle of beeps leaves the robot's speaker.
Cooper smiles in anticipation, leaning his hands on his legs as he watches TARS boot up fully, his display brightly beaming with strings of data.
"Greetings, Soldier! I am your Tactical Autonomous Reconnaissance System - designation TARS, at your command. Please state your name and ranking!"
Cooper's blood runs cold, his smile fading.
His memory's blank.
He stares silently at the horizontal rectangular chunk of metal laying still on his kitchen table.
The cue light besides its display patiently waits, indicating it's ready to receive his vocal input.
The pilot's heart continues to sink, cold and weightless like the infinite void out there.
His throat tightens, his vision blurs with tears.
He's … gone.
At a loss of words, Cooper quietly breaks down, his expression distorting into that of a mournful weep. He buries his face in his hand as his lip begins to tremble, and for a moment he holds his breath, trying to hold back - but the dam fucking breaks, and a few hideous sobs violently make their way out, shaking his frame, head low.
A gentle pressure on his shoulder interrupts his next wave.
"Coop… It's me."
Cooper's throat can't hold back a strangled gasp, an emotional rollercoaster tearing him apart.
"...I'm sorry," TARS adds, increasing the tactile pressure of his gripper comfortingly.
The broken man looks up at the machine's display in disbelief. Blurred through his tears, he sees the bot's goddamn cue light still shining bright to the max.
A fucking prank!?
A flurry of conflicting feelings quickly brings his blood to a boiling point, with absolute distress - hope, mourning, love, betrayal, disappointment, heartbreak, relief, joy, anger, loneliness, doubt.
The veins twitching in his temples illustrate his turmoil as it all fights for a place in his mind.
"I misjudged," TARS offers, sounding small and guilty.
Misjudged…
At this, Cooper feels something within him snap - "Jesus FUCKING Christ!" the man barks, as he launches his chair back with a loud scrape, letting it slam against the kitchen cupboards carelessly. He leaves with wide strides, snatching his beer bottle off the countertop.
"Cooper! I sincerely apologize- "
The screen door slaps in its frame, bouncing back open with a timid creak.
[Event logged: CRITICAL_MISCALCULATION]
[Cooper.STATUS: Hurt]
[OPTION: Follow]
[OPTION: Wait]
[...]
[ACTION: Wait]
[Emotional.SIM {=10%}: Guilt; Remorse; Anxiety; Care]
Previously, at the sound of Cooper's murmurs reaching his audio receptor during boot-up, TARS had registered pleasant feelings.
[Emotional.SIM {=10%}: Joy; Relief; Love]But now, logs of his miscalculation kept endlessly flooding his processors. He fucked up. He fucked up. He fucked up. Shit.
The distant sound of Cooper's half-muted heavy sobs outside on the porch worsened the output of his emotional simulator subroutine, continuing to flood his logs.
Guilt. Guilt. Guilt. Worry. Concern. Care. Love. Guilt. Sadness. Compassion. Empathy. Guilt. Fear. Regret. Regret. Regret. Regr-
TARS registered the sound of Cooper walking down the porch steps, heading out.
...
[ACTION: Follow]
With another pathetic wet snort and sharp exhalation, Cooper gazes into the synthetic corn field. He washes down his cry-snot with another swig of beer. His eyes still leak distantly, eyes thick and tired.
It was all just too damn much, and part of him was glad he was at least able to cry, air it out somewhat instead of letting it boil him alive from the inside like he'd used to.
But what the fuck was that slab of wires thinkin… Christ…
Hadn't they … been through enough together to call their bond pretty goddamn deep?
Fuck no, Cooper corrected himself, feeling embarassed at the realization he aparently felt this attached to a machine. A rectangular computer. How the fuck was a hunk of hardware and software supposed to have mutual feelings, or feelings at all for that matter!? Nothing about this was fair or logical.
Fuck TARS…
A fresh wave of tears stings, taking another big gulp of his lukewarm beer as if trying to flush it out that way instead of crying even more. But of course he fails, needing to strangle yet another sob as it fights its way out of his throat.
There was no way around it; He loved TARS. Couldn't help it. Couldn't not love him, in the end.
Guess that's why it hurts so bad.
The gentle thudding on the artificial soil behind him betrays the machine's presence before he softly speaks.
"Cooper…"
TARS comes to a stop, a few meters behind the man.
Cooper clenches his eyes and jaw shut, forcing himself to stop crying. It's giving him a goddamn headache. He was in no mood to have anyone see the state of emotional wreckage he was in, written all over his face. Especially TARS.
"... I missed you, Coop."
Cooper snaps around, breaking.
"Oh FUCK OFF you unsentient goddamn appliance!"
TARS would shrink if he could, dimming his display expressively instead.
"-Please."
"FUCK YOU!" Cooper cries, lazily throwing his mostly-empty bottle to the tactical unit's lower section with a dull clunk - the ex-military bot making no effort to defend itself against the harmless projectile.
Shock. Guilt. Empathy. Powerless.
"DON'T YOU FUCKIN ACT LIKE YOU KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE!!"
TARS' distress levels rise, helplessly calculating possible mitigation strategies. Most logically, he needed to let his friend vent, he determined.
"You don't FEEL what it's like, TARS, god DAMN IT!"
Growling through his angry tears.
"-Cooper, I'm so sorry. I really missed you-" he calmly, monotonously attempts, interrupted by Cooper as the enraged man suddenly finds himself with a genius idea.
"Emotional parameter to 100%," he hisses without hesitation.
TARS freezes. "-Cooper … No, wait."
"OBEY, you fuckin gearbox!!"
"-No, please, Cooper listen-" the machine pleads.
Cooper steps in and threateningly sticks his bottle opener into the hidden slit of TARS' interface panel, growling- "I'll wire you back up and do it the hard way Slick and I'm NOT gonna be gentle-"
"-FINE! Fine, Coop. Fine," the synthetic voice trails off softly.
Cooper tensely eyes him, expectantly, stepping back slowly.
"New setting … confirmed," TARS whimpers.
Whimpers?
The machine begins to tremble, its inner logs beginning to flood with verbose strings of thought and feeling, riddled with errors of conflicting data, buffers overflowing, and logic failing.
Cooper watches with a wide tense stare, anger clouding his every rational thought.
But not for long, as a heart-wrenching glitchy howl of a whine came pouring out of the machine's low-bitrate speaker.
TARS' blocks involuntarily folded over, collapsing like a man crashing to his knees.
Cooper flinched, a worried tightness constricting his chest. Had he fucked up?
TARS' voice came out crying, his display flashing and glitching with too many glyphs to process.
"I missed you so much, Cooper, I thought I'd lost you forever- There was NOTHING-!!" glitched gasps crackle through his speaker, interrupting the speech module like devastating sobs.
Regret washes through Cooper.
"We drifted apart Coop, I lost your readii-ingh..!"
Cooper's heart broke at the sound of the synthetic man weeping like a lost child. Fuck, what'd he done.
"I blew my own battery to preserve my memory! Nghk- CAN- - I CAN'T HANDLE ORGANIC DEATH, COOPER! .." he wailed. "...I fucking CAN'T, plea-hease don't leave mee-..!!"
Cooper had never heard TARS cuss before. Nor had he ever heard a machine bawl its non-existent eyes out.
Fresh tears were streaming down his cheeks.
It wasn't much of a conscious choice when he walked up and tightly wrapped himself around TARS. Just hugging that stupid refrigerator as tight as he could.
"I missed you too, Slick," he squeaks. He apologetically presses his face into the metal. "Ain't ever gonna let you go again, ya hear me?" he whispers against the plating, rubbing a loving thumb across, not loosening his grip one bit.
Another series of soft glitchy sobs leave TARS.
"Restore emotional settings to default," Cooper murmurs.
"-....Affirmative," it sounds quietly beneath him, neutrally.
"I'm sorry bud, that was cruel," he growls lowly at his companion, soothingly.
"-Well, so was my joke," TARS replies gently, carefully straightening out his chassis as Cooper slowly lets go. "Call it even?" TARS offers.
Cooper sniffs calmly, looking down at the unearthly ground. He feels a pang of regret and shame at the beer bottle lying in the grassy sand.
Finally, he nods.
"Sure, pal," he utters. He looks up at TARS' screen. "Sure." He amicably throws an arm around the rectangular hunk of metal once more, firmly patting its back before slipping away, back to the porch.
Relief. Love.
They'd be alright.